On the day the youngest player in the top 100, Borna Coric, turned 18, Novak Djokovic proved his pedigree, beating Tomas Berdych with ridiculous ease and confirming his official status as the best player in the world.
Perhaps Coric one day will challenge Djokovic and the game’s other giants at the top of the mountain. He has a little way to go yet but he looked scarily sure of himself accepting the ATP’s Star of Tomorrow award in London this week, a bauble that arrived only a few weeks after he beat Rafael Nadal in Basel, albeit the Spaniard was not in good health.
Djokovic, meanwhile, powers on, leaving a player even as accomplished as Berdych swatting at lost causes. The Serb won 6-2, 6-2 in an hour and nine minutes in the penultimate group match of the ATP World Tour Finals on Friday, a neat bookend to the 6-1, 6-1 he put on Marin Cilic on Monday, one of 10 two-setters out of the first 11 matches, on the face of it an appalling statistic for a tournament featuring the best eight available players in the world.
All Berdych could offer by way of explanation was: “I find the court very tricky, very challenging. It doesn’t allow you any mistakes. I think it’s very slow. For those of us who want to hit [a big] serve and try to play aggressively, it’s very difficult. So that’s why we struggle.”
Up to a point. While Djokovic is a defensive master, he also gives the ball a hell of a smack and he was slapping his forehand at an average 76 miles an hour, with a top speed of 111mph, 10 miles an hour faster than the Czech. So there are ways of making even the slowest court quick enough, a point Andy Murray made about Roger Federer’s winning half-volley shots off the baseline in his own public embarrassment the night before.
There is also the small matter of speed of thought. As fine a player as Berdych is, Djokovic’s tennis brain moves at a click or two quicker than most. He is not just a great mover, but a fine anticipator – and rarely found in the wrong place.
As Berdych conceded after his 17th defeat in 19 matches against Djokovic: “Definitely he deserved to win, no question about it. He just secured his spot as the No1 player in the world, which shows how great he is, how well he played during the whole season.
“There was not much [chance] that this match could go the other way. There was no way I could have challenged him better than I did.”
He was two games better, at least, than when they last met; Djokovic said after that 6-0, 6-2 walloping in Beijing last month that it was probably the best match he had ever played. There is a strong sentiment growing he might yet improve on even that performance.
He plays Kei Nishikori in the first semi-final on Saturday afternoon and the Japanese, having his breakout season, will have to be at his very strongest to stretch the contest to three sets, although he will have memories of his very good win in the semi-finals of the US Open to sustain him – although he probably would not like to recall Djokovic’s 6-2, 6-3 mastery of him in Paris two weeks ago.
“Being No1 in the world is the pinnacle of the sport,” Djokovic said. “Winning grand slams [of which Wimbledon this year was his seventh] also is something that allows you to write the history of this sport.”
Beating Nishikori and then, in all likelihood, Roger Federer, would be the cherry on a rather nice 2014 cake for the newly married parent. If it is to be Djokovic’s era, after all, he is, at 27, reaching a peak of excellence that can be frightening.
